scholarly journals Epistemic Instrumentalism, Permissibility, and Reasons for Belief

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Epistemic Instrumentalism

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model of practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. This chapter argues that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provides normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission.

scholarly journals Epistemic Blame and the Normativity of Evidence

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Plausible Assumption ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Epistemic Blame

AbstractThe normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.

Parentheticalism and Requirements of Rationality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Structural Requirements

It is suggested that parentheticalism obviates the need to think of rationality as a distinct normative category, different from the category of support by normative reasons. So-called structural requirements are discussed as a potential obstacle to this proposal. It is shown that a parentheticalist account of the antecedents of rationality conditionals can explain away the impression that there are structural requirements of rationality. This account also solves the bootstrapping problem without introducing wide-scope oughts or the like. A notion of pseudo-detachment is introduced to describe the inferential behavior of the relevant conditionals. It is also explained how parentheticalism can capture the elusive idea of taking the subject’s point of view.

Against Internalism-Parity

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-78
Author(s):  
Christopher Cowie
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
The Law

It is argued that the first version of the parity premise—internalism-parity—is false. It is false because epistemic judgements are committed to the existence of ‘merely institutional’ reasons. Moral judgements, by contrast, are committed to the existence of genuinely normative reasons. This claim is defended by appeal to the basic rationale that epistemic judgements are normative or evaluative only in the sense of normative or evaluative judgements within ‘institutions’ such as sports and games, etiquette, fashion, and the law, but moral judgements are not. It is argued that this does not render epistemic norms merely conventional in an objectionable sense.

scholarly journals An Instrumentalist Account of How to Weigh Epistemic and Practical Reasons for Belief

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (516) ◽  
pp. 1071-1094
Author(s):  
Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen ◽  
Mattias Skipper
Keyword(s):  
Combinatorial Problem ◽  
Good News ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Combinatorial Properties ◽  
Epistemic Instrumentalism ◽  
Added Benefit ◽  
Instrumental Reasons

Abstract When one has both epistemic and practical reasons for or against some belief, how do these reasons combine into an all-things-considered reason for or against that belief? The question might seem to presuppose the existence of practical reasons for belief. But we can rid the question of this presupposition. Once we do, a highly general ‘Combinatorial Problem’ emerges. The problem has been thought to be intractable due to certain differences in the combinatorial properties of epistemic and practical reasons. Here we bring good news: if we accept an independently motivated version of epistemic instrumentalism—the view that epistemic reasons are a species of instrumental reasons—we can reduce The Combinatorial Problem to the relatively benign problem of how to weigh different instrumental reasons against each other. As an added benefit, the instrumentalist account can explain the apparent intractability of The Combinatorial Problem in terms of a common tendency to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an elliptical manner.

Reasons, Perceptual Grounds, and Normative Explanation

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-86
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Propositional Justification ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
External Reasons

Reasons come in many forms. There are reasons to believe, for believing, for which one believes, and why one believes; and some are internal reasons we have, others external reasons we lack. This chapter clarifies how we have normative reasons for beliefs in virtue of certain experiential states that ground those reasons: these states, including sense-experiences and hedonic experiences, are the kinds that ground the rationality of beliefs or the desirability of acts. Normative reasons, practical as well as theoretical, are themselves grounded in certain experiential elements, including perceptions as a central kind. Normative reasons for belief are unified by their explanatory scope: they can explain propositional justification—roughly, justification that at least permits our properly believing propositions adequately supported by our experience. These normative explanations parallel causal explanations that hold between the experiential elements, such as perceptions, that ground the reasons and the doxastically justified beliefs that reflect those experiences.

scholarly journals Reasons for Belief and Normativity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathrin Glüer ◽  
Åsa Wikforss
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Internal Connection

In this chapter, we critically examine the most important extant ways of understanding and motivating the idea that reasons for belief are normative. First, we examine the proposal that the distinction between explanatory and so-called normative reasons that is commonly drawn in moral philosophy can be rather straightforwardly applied to reasons for belief, and that reasons for belief are essentially normative precisely when they are normative reasons. In the course of this investigation, we explore the very nature of the reasons-for-belief relation, as well as the ontology of such reasons. Second, we examine the idea that the normativity derives from the internal connection between reasons for belief and epistemic justification, distinguishing between two distinct normativist accounts of justification, a weaker and a stronger one. We argue that neither line of argument is compelling. Pending further arguments, we conclude that normativism about reasons for belief is not supported.

Justified Belief, Reasons, and Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Alan Millar
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
The Subject

Normative reasons for belief—reasons to believe something—are constituted by truths or facts. Such reasons are distinguished from motivating reasons for belief, that is, reasons for which a subject believes something. These are constituted by considerations that the subject treats as reasons to believe. One has a justified belief, in the sense of a well-founded belief, only if the considerations that constitute one’s motivating reason are truths that one knows. Evidence-based knowledge that P is explicated in terms truths or facts that provide an adequate reason to believe that P. It is argued that not all knowledge is evidence-based, and suggested that we need to make sense of the idea that evidence adequate for knowledge is clinching evidence. The discussion addresses a problem raised by Jennifer Hornsby about the distinction between normative and motivating reasons.

scholarly journals Pragmatic Reasons for Belief

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Reisner
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Reasons For Belief

In some circumstances, a wedge may be driven between what is advantageous or beneficial to believe and what is true. Cases range from the exotic—with diabolical forces conspiring to punish a hapless victim for believing the truth—to the mundane—with excessive optimism increasing one’s chances of success at some tasks. In contemporary discussions about normative reasons for belief, it is often argued or assumed that all reasons for belief arise only from epistemological considerations. This chapter assesses the case for the contrary claim: that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief. The chapter begins with a discussion of the standard arguments for and against non-ecumenical evidentialism. After concluding that case for non-ecumenical evidentialism is tenuous, the chapter canvasses and assesses the diverse range of arguments in favor of there being pragmatic reasons for belief.

The Game of Belief

2020 ◽  
Vol 129 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Maguire ◽  
Jack Woods
Keyword(s):  
Functional Role ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Standard ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Important Sense

It is plausible that there is a distinctively epistemic standard of correctness for belief. It is also plausible that there is a range of practical reasons bearing on belief. These theses are often thought to be in tension with each other. To resolve the tension, the authors draw on an analogy with a similar distinction between types of reasons for actions in the context of activities. This motivates a two-level account of the structure of normativity. The account relies upon a further distinction between normative reasons and authoritatively normative reasons. Only the latter constitutively play the functional role of explaining what state one just plain ought to be in. The authors conjecture that all and only practical reasons are authoritative. Hence, in one important sense, all reasons for belief are practical reasons. But this account also preserves the autonomy and importance of epistemic reasons.

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